ith the global population crossing 8 billion in November of 2022, development practitioners and policymakers are back to their drawing boards collating thoughts on ways to unleash the power of the growing demographic burden to a reliable demographic dividend.
The increasing inequality between the haves and the have nots, coexistence of extreme poverty and luxurious living, the carbon footprints of the richest economies of the world brings back the pertinent concern of defining wellbeing and charting out wellbeing related indicators. The growing recognition of the fact that development does not essentially translate to wellbeing whilst contributing to the wellbeing dividend is based on the failure of economic indicators to capture the non-economic aspects of human living. Development in its true sense surpasses the economic domains and manifests in the overall human progression, participation, and freedom.
Wellbeing or Being Well?
Though there exist numerous definitions of the term wellbeing, none have been unanimously accepted. The term wellbeing has had a long history starting from indicating happiness and prosperity to the newer dimensions reflecting agency, participation, living and faring well. For many, wellbeing is synonymous to the material resources that people can control, possess, utilize, and dispose of, and is measured mostly in terms of disposable income.
Despite claims that income and wellbeing are positively correlated, empirical evidence supports the fact that sustainable consumption, despite rising income, reflect in greater wellbeing, gives rise to what is known as the wellbeing dividend. However, beyond a certain threshold, rising income does not manifest in the wellbeing of the society at large—a situation commonly known as the wellbeing paradox. To overcome this ambiguity, tools like Max Neef’s Human Scale Development helps analyze the forms of organization, values, social practices, norms, attitudes, etc. which promote or impede need satisfaction at individual, household and community levels in specific cultural contexts enabling communities to devise strategies to experience wellbeing in their day-to-day life.
The realization of wellbeing dividend calls for an effective convergence of the objective—material conditions of a person’s life often represented by wealth indicators—subjective (self-evaluation of personal circumstances, life satisfaction etc.), and relational (opportunities available to an individual in relation to other persons) wellbeing parameters. Of late there has been a growing consensus on focusing on economic, social, cultural, and ecological indicators like amenities for a good life, health, social relations, security, and freedom of choice in measuring the wellbeing dividend.
The Need of the Hour
Time has come to identify that a well-integrated social living, strong interpersonal relationships, freedom of expression and that of choice are more reliable determinants of the wellbeing dividend and this calls for reorienting traditional mindsets towards a more progressive one.
Rather than measuring the cumulative wellbeing dividend in the later stages of life, we need to focus on the initial years of a young person’s life. For instance, a child in school can experience happiness through strong interpersonal ties, freedom of expression, and participation in social events which are way beyond the happiness derived from the possession of physical resources. Children can be taken through trainings on life skills like stress-coping mechanisms, critical thinking, resilience, empathy for others etc. to help them thrive sustainably and make meaningful contribution to the society.
All these would require a mindset shift change from the traditional system of rote learning to one that is more dynamic, inclusive, holistic, and has ingrained dynamism in the teaching-learning process. Teachers and caregivers undoubtedly have a crucial role to play as facilitators spearheading the process of change in the traditional system of assessing the holistic development of the children.
For developing nations like ours, rather than realizing the wellbeing dividend at a macro lens, time has come for us to take urgent steps to implement mechanisms to experience the wellbeing dividend at the ground level so that the demographic burden translates into an uncontested dividend that ensures wellbeing of everyone.
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The Paradox of Wellbeing and Mindset: Translating Burden to Dividend
Photo via Adobe Stock.
January 21, 2023
Increasing inequality between the haves and the have nots brings the pertinent concern of defining wellbeing. For development, overall human progression, participation, and freedom should be the goal as development does not always translate to wellbeing, write Sweta Bhusan & Sreehari Ravindranath.
W
ith the global population crossing 8 billion in November of 2022, development practitioners and policymakers are back to their drawing boards collating thoughts on ways to unleash the power of the growing demographic burden to a reliable demographic dividend.
The increasing inequality between the haves and the have nots, coexistence of extreme poverty and luxurious living, the carbon footprints of the richest economies of the world brings back the pertinent concern of defining wellbeing and charting out wellbeing related indicators. The growing recognition of the fact that development does not essentially translate to wellbeing whilst contributing to the wellbeing dividend is based on the failure of economic indicators to capture the non-economic aspects of human living. Development in its true sense surpasses the economic domains and manifests in the overall human progression, participation, and freedom.
Wellbeing or Being Well?
Though there exist numerous definitions of the term wellbeing, none have been unanimously accepted. The term wellbeing has had a long history starting from indicating happiness and prosperity to the newer dimensions reflecting agency, participation, living and faring well. For many, wellbeing is synonymous to the material resources that people can control, possess, utilize, and dispose of, and is measured mostly in terms of disposable income.
Despite claims that income and wellbeing are positively correlated, empirical evidence supports the fact that sustainable consumption, despite rising income, reflect in greater wellbeing, gives rise to what is known as the wellbeing dividend. However, beyond a certain threshold, rising income does not manifest in the wellbeing of the society at large—a situation commonly known as the wellbeing paradox. To overcome this ambiguity, tools like Max Neef’s Human Scale Development helps analyze the forms of organization, values, social practices, norms, attitudes, etc. which promote or impede need satisfaction at individual, household and community levels in specific cultural contexts enabling communities to devise strategies to experience wellbeing in their day-to-day life.
The realization of wellbeing dividend calls for an effective convergence of the objective—material conditions of a person’s life often represented by wealth indicators—subjective (self-evaluation of personal circumstances, life satisfaction etc.), and relational (opportunities available to an individual in relation to other persons) wellbeing parameters. Of late there has been a growing consensus on focusing on economic, social, cultural, and ecological indicators like amenities for a good life, health, social relations, security, and freedom of choice in measuring the wellbeing dividend.
The Need of the Hour
Time has come to identify that a well-integrated social living, strong interpersonal relationships, freedom of expression and that of choice are more reliable determinants of the wellbeing dividend and this calls for reorienting traditional mindsets towards a more progressive one.
Rather than measuring the cumulative wellbeing dividend in the later stages of life, we need to focus on the initial years of a young person’s life. For instance, a child in school can experience happiness through strong interpersonal ties, freedom of expression, and participation in social events which are way beyond the happiness derived from the possession of physical resources. Children can be taken through trainings on life skills like stress-coping mechanisms, critical thinking, resilience, empathy for others etc. to help them thrive sustainably and make meaningful contribution to the society.
All these would require a mindset shift change from the traditional system of rote learning to one that is more dynamic, inclusive, holistic, and has ingrained dynamism in the teaching-learning process. Teachers and caregivers undoubtedly have a crucial role to play as facilitators spearheading the process of change in the traditional system of assessing the holistic development of the children.
For developing nations like ours, rather than realizing the wellbeing dividend at a macro lens, time has come for us to take urgent steps to implement mechanisms to experience the wellbeing dividend at the ground level so that the demographic burden translates into an uncontested dividend that ensures wellbeing of everyone.
